AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

I was wondering if anyone else has had a chicken killed by a Phascogale?
In my post about the 'Help...chicken killer' people have told me about this Phascogale possum creature.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had that experience, did it bite off your chickens head and leave the body too?
I would be interested in knowing how they kill the chicken and why they only eat the head? And does the chicken suffer, or die fast?
terrible animal!!!!! , i feel very upset for my little hen


-thanks

There are two different types of them, here is the info on both.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~fobr/Phascog ... _sheet.pdf

http://www.australianfauna.com/redtailedphascogale.php

Food Habits
Brush-tailed phascogales are mostly carnivorous. They hunt and kill small mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, spiders, and centipedes. They have been know to kill and eat chickens, and they generally avoid eating carrion. Phascogale tapoatafa can be arboreal and has been known to feed on the nectar of eucalyptus flowers (Nowak, 1999
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/s ... atafa.html

The red-tailed variety is in Western Australia, the northern brush tailed one is in the NT, The Brush-tailed Phascogale is still found in southern Queensland, between the Great Dividing Range and the coast, through much of coastal northern NSW and many parts of central Victoria. Also, it still occurs in the extreme south-west of Western Australia and the tip of Cape York Peninsula. A sub-species occurs through the Kimberley Region and across the northern parts of the Northern Territory to Arnhem Land.

judging by the arboreal nature of them they may be gaining entry to your pen via a tree or other structure.

I first thought it could be a rat but I have only known rats to take smaller birds ie budgies and canaries in the nest or on the perch. You usually find the bird minus the head, awful stuff to find in the mornings. I am guessing by the descriptions these animals are like a large water rat in size rather than a little feather glider or sugar glider and can squeeze themselves flat.

I hope it doesn't come back.

Thanks for your replies, yesterday i checked out the Phascogale on youtube. It's such a small fast creature, i don't think any amout of fence would stop it.
I'm trying to get my parents to get a Maremma, to protect my chickens, since our run is too complicated to roof. Dad wants one but my Mum is sick of all these pets aha.


thanks for all your replies, great help.

What a nasty little critter! We live in Salisbury (BrisVagus), and I have had exactly the same thing happen here! Hubby suggested a fox, and although we had seen them around the area, I couldn't get past the fact that it was HEAD ONLY! Sounds like the phascogale has struck again !


OH NOOO, what chance do my babies (6weeks) have when they go to the new run? (6ft chain wire, covered with wire, corro iron hen house, etc) Could they get through chain wire??

Cass

Here is my seasons pesky (aka phascogale) story. Incidentally, I live in the Noosa Hinterland, Queensland, about 2 hours north of Brisbane.

Last month I put an incubated silkie youngster into the big pen and it is going fine. It was sick as a baby so I’m as happy it seemed ok. But three days later - dead - and with a nasty injury on its back. I assumed it died due to being sickly as a chick and the other chooks had a pick after it died. So write it off as a bit sad but 's..t hapens'.

The next night while cooking I hear the classic - chook being eaten by a fox scream. I last heard it when a chook was being eaten by a fox and I will never forget it. So a mad search for a torch and of course it wasn't put away last night after candelling some eggs in the bator. Sprint to the pen with my heart pumping imagining my special silkie hens being ripped apart. I bust through the door to see my splash hen with 3 chicks running around the pen screaming in terror with a grey animal hanging off her. S..t a rat is eating Splash. I run to her and grab its tail. It lets go and turns to run up my arm while the hen bolts out the door and into the blackness. I throw the animal off only to see a poor little baby possum run across the floor. A baby brushtail just looking for somewhere warm to sleep and where better then under a silkie. It disappeared into the back of the house and the hen is found, after an extensive search, just metres from the dam. Well, that was my excitement for the night.

The following morning one of the Splash’s chick is dead and is minus a head. Bloody rats I think. A possum couldn't do that.

So the next night I put my two groups of silkies into rat-proof broody boxes. Four hens and a roo in each one. There is hay on the floor so I have a thought 'I hope the rat isn't in the box' so I poke around under the hay with a stick. 'Paranoid loser’, I think. The younger roo doesn't want to go in and tries to escape. I grab him and force him into the house - 'it''s for your own good' I say to him. So I return to my house and cook tea etc. Before sitting down for some TV I get a bad feeling and decide to check on the chooks. Not a nice sight. One dark blue hen dead. And the rest huddled against the door. I quickly ran over and grabbed the survivors out and examine the dead one. When turned over the guts spew out over my hand from the hole in her gut. Bile comes into my throat and I am in danger of losing dinner. So what to do with the chooks.

I have an outside pen that houses excess roos - under cover but not as warm as the house. So one lot of chooks goes in with the young roos and the others in a spare cage next to the roos. Back to the house and my 3yo daughter decided to 'cook'. The whole kitchen floor is cover with 4 kgs of flour, eggs, milk, sugar and uncooked pasta. She is in the middle with a big smile and a mixing spoon and two large dogs are with her eating pasta. All white from flour. Three hours later I go to bed.

Next morning - all is fine with the chooks. I buy more hay to keep them warmer etc. After dark I hear the dying chook noise again. This time I have a torch on hand but it is bucketing down – middle of a fierce storm. I had left all the gates open (just in case) so I get there fast. Poor Splash is being attacked by the 'baby possum' again. I grab the chook-net and climb into the pen and manage to net the mongrel. Splash is still screaming. I run to the house through the teaming rain with the animal wrapped in the net yelling for hubby to get something to put it in before I kill the M. F. . Into the house, and the animal gets out of the net and runs behind a cupboard. Daughter is on the couch screaming 'RAT RAT RAT', I am screaming 'kill that silkie killer' and hubby is saying 'its a glider they only eat nectar - you must be mistaken'. 'Mistaken ?? I saw it eating a hen - kill it'. So I find a box and poke it out from behind the cubboard and herd it into the bathroom. Daughter is still screaming RAT RAT RAT and things are tense. So it ends up clinging to the shower rose and is eventually photographed and captured. Hubby still yelling 'it eats flowers not silkies - it's endangered'. 'I don't give a s..t if it eats flowers with silkies - It ate 2 of my silkies and injured another - get rid of it'.

For those worried about the animal both hubby and myself work with endangered animals (but not mammals). It was never going to be killed.

On further examination we realise it is a phascogale. A meat-eating marsupial that used to be known as 'Vampire Marsupial' due to its tendency to kill poultry. It must have been hiding in the broody box under the hay all along. It was relocated into the state forest the next day.

I went down to check on Splash but she is huddled in the corner with her two chicks again and looks ok (apart from a wound on her back) so I leave her so not to stress her further.

These little creatures, about the size of a big rat, cling on and eat until they cut something important (like an artery or into the guts etc) to kill the chook. Have a feed and leave most of the body. They are marsupials so have a pouch and only live a couple of years. The males die after the breeding season due to ‘overwork’.

I thought all was fine but a few days later I lost another silkie, my first ever silkie hen and the best broody and mother. My neighbour had an australorp injured the night before. We spent the morning making a new pesky-gale proof pen for my survivors. Not sure if the same one came back or another moved in to an empty territory. My neighbour spent yesterday building a new house as well. I got a live rat trap and caught the second pesky-gale a few nights later. It was a very skinny and sick male that died the next night at the wildlife place it was moved to until relocated. As they are quite rare I must have them all.

But wait the story continues.

About a week later I was away - doing endangered species talks of all things at a festival - and hubby gets a call at midnight. A distraught neighbour with a pesky in her henhouse, it escapes up a tree and her chooks are ok. Hubby goes to bed again - then wakes to a screaming chook noise. Runs down to the pen and australorp roo is running up and down the wire with injuries to his head. He is caught and a pesky falls out of his chest feathers - it disappears into the night. So the roo is taken to the house and put in as box. Back to bed - hubby just goes to sleep and more noises from the pen. Now a full grown lorp hen is on her back on the floor of the pen with a pesky on her belly and the oldest hen trying to get it off. The net is still handy so the chook and phascogale are netted and pesky put in a box. Hen is ok. Roo seems to have been dubbed. The comb is much lower and the serrations seem to have been rubbed off. The pesky is living at the wildlife carers until a better place is found.

Now I have a baited trap in my pen every night - as does my neighbour.

My elderly neighbour who has been here 30 years has never seen one before. Now we have the whole bloody family eating our chooks. Apparently it is breeding season and they have a very high protein need so search far and wide for easy feeds. It is a good season and there are a few about.

This is what I think seems they grab hold of a sleeping chook and start eating. The chooks run around and eventually hit their heads and die. But the last silkie killed didn’t make a sound – so she must have died fast. Maybe if they happen to grab near a vital vein or artery they kill fast. It took her head, apparently the brain is the most nutritious part so they prefer that. The second chicken killed also had its head taken. The first was a back injury and the one that survived was also a back injury. My neighbour’s lorp also has a back injury. My lorps didn’t get injured except for the dubbed comb. Maybe it is much harder to get through the bigger feathers and it didn’t get a chance to latch on to flesh.

The one at the carers escaped using a hole about 1 * 1 inch. So they can fit through small spaces. The other thing is that they live in terrtiories so if you remove one another may claim that territory. A positive is they are deadly on mice. I have a freind with a colony in his shed and he only occasionally loses a hen. They eat all of the mice .

I have just come back from a holiday to hear the devastating news that my 3 isa browns were killed by a predator that ate only their heads. I have seen an animal that looks like the Brush-tailed Phascogale running along the top rail of the back fence a few times so I'm not sure if this is the culprit. I live in south east burbs of Melbourne. My cat was housed in a cattery 3 days before this occurred. Maybe the absence of the cat & myself was enough for this nasty serial killer to attack my much-loved girls. I'm very sad for Ruby who I was an ex-battery hen with a new lease on life, had blossomed so much, only to have it ended so prematurely & violently. My friend who was looking after them took some photos but I can't bring myself to look at them.
I feel like I let all three of them down by failing to protect them. I guess one of the tough things about poultry ownership is that they can become the victims of so many possible predators.
I think I will get more chooks, but I need to ensure that I maximise security & change the coop to a fortress.
RIP Mavis, Madge & Ruby xxx

ms chook

My heart goes out to you with your sad story of loosing your girls. It is so devastating when your pet/s leaves for chook heaven. We will never be prepared for it.

I am now a little scared about my chooks safety. These little creatures seem extremely vicious and callous. It will make it difficult to predator proof our runs agains these little nasties. I thought fox might be our worst predator but I am changing my opionion on that. These phascogales seem the biggest threat.

I do hope you get some more girls soon. Chooks are good for the soul.

Thanks chickababe. I will get more. My cat, Matty is very spoilt & fussy with his food, so I used to feed the chooks lots of leftovers treats from Matty & myself. I miss the routine of seeing them devour these treats in seconds & how excited & competitive they would be. I will definitely get some more girls soon.

Thanks also to pepe. The details of your ordeal helped me find out so much more about this predator which I know nothing about before.